I've been reading on various forums around the neighborhood that some crabbers have been adding rollie pollie bugs to their crabitats in an effort to create a more natural and closed system. Personally I was skeptical and decided to let the first wave of bug experimentors have a go at it but I must say, everyone has a lot of great things to say about how well contained they are and how neat and tidy the crabitat seems to be since their addition.

After doing some research of my own I was also interested to find out that they aren't in fact, bugs, but crustaceans. So they are distantly related to crabs themselves! They feed on decaying materials as well as mold so they are a real help keeping your crabitat clean and eliminating problem areas like that hidden piece of food. And because they dig, if you've got buried food that is beginning to mold they will take care of that as well.

I recruited my son and a few friends and we went off in search of the rollie pollies. I knew right where to head because I've encountered them several times before . . . the brick pile. The love dark moist places and the brick pile was like a rollie pollie Hilton. It didn't take long before I had quite a few in my jar.

It doesn't seem like a lot, and I didn't count them at the time, but I counted the ones I could see in this picture and I got more than 65. There doesn't seem to be a rule of thumb for how many you should add. I was planing on adding 30-50. My tank is a 90 gallon terrarium with 20+ crabs in it. The substrate is coconut fiber bedding that goes from 6 inches to 8 inches. There's just no hard and fast rule. I don't think I'd add more than 1 per gallon at this time. But to be honest, that's a guess on my part. I think I'd rather err on the side of caution and have more work for them to do in there than I have bugs to do it with.

They are an interesting addition and my friends, my son and I had a wonderful time scouring the backyard for bugs. Make sure, if you add them to your tank that you provide some maple leaves or bark or other organic material for them to munch on if they run out of moldy egg yolks.

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